Yet, when they wander out of bed, these same people, who cannot function without their satellite radios, satellite TV, MP3s, polyphonic ringtones on their ubiquitous cellaphones, refuse to engage in editing themselves. Practically anything will fall out of their peurile mouths, including banalities, profanities, and pounds of unnecessary and unconnected cliches.

What purpose does all this unedited bile serve? It is not for communication, there is no message. It is not for entertainment, because no one is watching and the performances are mostly simultaneous. It is merely the human animal making noises. they would be better off silent or singing... anything is better than being just a noisy animal. Listening is better, but listening would mean giving over the stage to something else, perhaps even reality.

When these morons go to the movies or watch the tube for the videos from their favorite "artists", they see the efforts of a costume designer, yet they leave the theatre or the house without a clue that they might be capable of the same.

They watch talk shows and political documentaries and benefit from the efforts of five second delays and the selection of camera angles and coverage and "sweetening" and even lighting, makeup and color choices. They go to rallies and listen to their favorite rabble-rousers, or to coliseums and listen to their favorite musicians or singers, without a thought that every word, every note has been rehearsed and parsed to a fare-thee-well. Then they go home and just let fly without a thought.

They will sit down with a favorite book or carry it to school, church, or meeting, rereading or reciting the words as if they were scripture, believing it to be the message from the soul of truth itself, regardless of whether the author's intent was fiction or otherwise, all without knowing that each sentence had been scanned and trimmed by at least one editor, perhaps more.

They will drive autos that they view as the epitome of art and engineering, modifying them with after market devices and toys, with few of them conscious of the process of editing that led to their ride. It takes little effort to look up the photos of the original drawings, the clay models and the prototypes or to read the interviews with the creators and visionaries.

They will repeat odd anecdotes that they half-remember from documentaries, granma or the boys down at the shop. They will pick up bits of trivia from movies and consider it history. They will remember rumours, urban legends, and outright hoaxes and repeat them to their friends and children as gospel. They will go to their churches, synagogues and mosques, full of tradition, habit and ritual, without a clue as to the historical, cultural and anthropological background of their purported beliefs. They will watch "The DaVinci Code", run out and buy the paperback, and then take the "facts" that suit their already formed world view and paste them in their mental scrap book alongside hundreds of identically idiotic items. Once again, the fact that an editor or two was supposedly doing her job somewhere along the line doesn't effect them. The "truth will out".

They will accept their "holy books" and their culture's "history books" as a revelation from a deity. They will tune into their favorite "news" networks or satellite radio "reports" with not a single red pencil ready in their paws or their thoughts. News is real. The fact that hardly a single word or an untied tie makes it into scripture or a TV broadcast without triple scrutiny and the philosophical weight of hundreds of years of thought or unthought doesn't bother these folks. They have bills to pay, children to father, and jobs to avoid doing.

Editing is an important part of our civilization and an insidious part of what is wrong with it. "Reality" television programmes and movies are sprawled across the schedules and the video stores, all edited within an inch of their lives. "Based on a true story" books, movies and television shows are everywhere, all edited to a fine point that cannot be missed by even the mentally and philosophically retarded.

Our laws are edited, run through a sieve that removes all spontaneity and even humanity, so that the "law" supposed lays there, a watch assembled by fate, rather than human hands.

Editors can and do lie. Editors skim the cream from the soon-to-be homogenized product. Conspiracy theorists, by definition a cabal of their own, breath in the editing of events and theories as if it were actual oxygen.

I think that every rational person needs to critically and dispassionately examine what they think they believe. I think that every irrational person needs to be taught that everything they think they know could be wrong. It is better to be confused by reality than to be certain of fantasy.

You can buy all the "greatest hits" you wish, but it has been my experience that sometimes the best song is the third one on the second side of the original ablum... the song that was not a "hit".